December 9, 2005 Account Balance: $98,460 Unrealized P&L: $5,622 Net Asset Value: $104,082 Margin %: 41% AUD/JPY: Long 2 units. GBP/JPY: Long 2 units. GBP/CHF: Long 1 unit. Nothing too spectacular today - going into the weekend with a nice carry boost.
December 12, 2005 Account Balance: $98,010 Unrealized P&L: $6,332 Net Asset Value: $104,343 Leverage: 4.25 AUD/JPY: Long 3 units. GBP/JPY: Long 3 units. GBP/CHF: Long 2 units. NZD/USD: Long 1 unit. I'm confused as to what margin % refers to - from now on I'll report leverage as (position value / net asset value). I need to work on my entrys/exits once Jan 1st hits, I'm not a fan of getting stopped out so frequently.
December 12, 2005 Account Balance: $98,068 Unrealized P&L: $5,814 Net Asset Value: $103,830 Leverage: 4.25 AUD/JPY: Long 3 units. GBP/JPY: Long 3 units. GBP/CHF: Long 2 units. NZD/USD: Long 1 unit. Nothing too spectacular. AUD/JPY is currently coiling its way down, we'll have to see where it pops. GBP/JPY is retracing after a breakdown this morning.
hi Geoff - there are threads here on ET discussing risk management issues and parameters - i think there is a current thread titled something like "Money Management" you can look it up - try searching for Sharpe ratio, Sortino ratio, you should come up with the relevant threads discussing these issues - in the end, risk management is the most critical part of your trading business, all else is secondary, if you mismanage / miscalculate / not understand risk and as a result take a significant hit to your equity, you may not be able to recover no matter how good your strategy is. so eventually you can come up with some way to normalize your performance figures for the leverage you are using... - in simple terms: if your leverage is 100 times, you are buying 100K worth of currency with 1000 margin.. - so if your return is 4K, your leveraged return is 400% and your unleveraged return is 4% in the end, as you will find from the reading, it comes down to how volatile are your returns on your overall equity and how large are the drawdowns. all the best.
December 14, 2005 Account Balance: $100,808 Unrealized P&L: $62 Net Asset Value: $100,870 Leverage: 0.36 NZD/USD: Long 1 unit. The long awaited day of JPY reckoning came - and it wasn't pretty. Got away with a ~3% loss on a multihundred pip drop in multiple pairs though... I really need to work on entries and exits. I'm coming to realize my current system is rather crude and needs some refinement. I'm planning on observing my current system in FXTrade and some in development systems in FXGame in the next few weeks.
December 15, 2005 Account Balance: $100,508 Unrealized P&L: $0 Net Asset Value: $100,508 Leverage: 0.00 I'm out! Completely! Bit frustrating, but it's better than losing more money. Most of the carry pairs took a hit this week.
December 16, 2005 Account Balance: $100,516 Unrealized P&L: $0 Net Asset Value: $100,516 Leverage: 0.00 Nothing to say with no positions on.
December 19, 2005 Account Balance: $100,542 Unrealized P&L: -$260 Net Asset Value: $100,282 Leverage: 0.98 NZD/USD: Long 1 unit. Underwater on NZD/USD. The system is currently quite defensive due to the drastic declines in JPY short pairs. In unrelated news, I'm done exams! Already a few beers into it, wish me luck tonight as I wear off some exam stress.
December 20, 2005 Account Balance: $100,240 Unrealized P&L: $460 Net Asset Value: $100,700 Leverage: 1.28 GBP/CHF: Long 1 unit. USD/CHF: Long 1 unit. USD/JPY: Long 1 unit.
December 21, 2005 Account Balance: $100,260 Unrealized P&L: $640 Net Asset Value: $100,900 Leverage: 1.27 GBP/CHF: Long 1 unit. USD/CHF: Long 1 unit. USD/JPY: Long 1 unit. Bit late on an update today... I won't go into why, but suffice to say that: If ANYONE knows of a decent 2 bedroom setup in the Toronto area for the next 4 months (Jan-Apr 2006) PM me.